Frieze London artistic director Eva Langret has said there is no single London style of art, describing the city's strength as lying in the meeting of different histories, cultures and ways of thinking.
Writing for the Art of London issue, Langret noted that every October the world's art market arrives in London, with collectors flying in and international galleries taking over Regent's Park. However, she argued that what makes London matter is not what arrives for a week but who stays all year.
London's Year-Round Art Scene
The UK is the world's second-largest art market, and London's galleries connect it to artists and collectors across the globe. Its museums, many of them free, put extraordinary collections within everyone's reach. Alongside art schools, small exhibition spaces and independent organisations, they help make the city a place where artists can find peers, test ideas and build a career.
Langret said her own early conversations with artists and curators in London shaped her understanding of art as much as anything she had studied. She said that sense of community and learning from people with different perspectives still excites her about the city.
Artists Building Careers in London
She highlighted several artists featured in the issue. George Rouy came from Sittingbourne to study at Camberwell College of Art in 2012; his canvases of contorted, ambiguous bodies are now shown by Hauser & Wirth. Alex Margo Arden began working with gallerist Freddie Powell when Ginny on Frederick was still a curatorial project in a sandwich shop. Last year, that partnership brought her to Frieze London's Focus section with an installation of decommissioned mannequins from the National Motor Museum. It won the inaugural Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize, and her work is on view at the Foundation in Chelsea until January.
Okiki Akinfe and Hettie Inniss were both born in London in 1999, studied at the Royal College of Art and are building their careers in the city. Akinfe's paintings bring humour and imagination to questions of identity and representation, while Inniss explores how memory lives in the senses. Rene Matić came to Central Saint Martins and, five years after graduating, was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings studied at Goldsmiths and have spent more than a decade examining queer life through drawing, film and fresco painting. Marcus Jefferson draws on his upbringing in north-west London, and Ella Fleck uses scent, sound and installation to investigate desire and technology's shaping of behaviour.
Support Needed Beyond the Fair
Langret said that freedom needs practical support: an affordable studio, time to develop work, and a gallery willing to take a chance before anyone knows an artist's name. Rising costs and the expense of art education make those possibilities harder to access.
She said everyone who benefits from London's art scene has a part to play. Frieze brings international collectors and curators into contact with the year-round scene, helping artists and galleries build relationships that extend beyond the week itself. The Focus section for galleries operating for 12 years or fewer is placed at the entrance because discovery should be at the heart of what the fair does.
Alex Margo Arden's prize-winning installation is now in the Arts Council Collection, while the Contemporary Art Society's Collections Fund at Frieze celebrates ten years of acquiring work for museums from Middlesbrough to Plymouth. Langret concluded by urging visitors to carry curiosity and commitment into the rest of the year, supporting the spaces that take a chance on artists and helping keep London a city where they can build a life.
